097 Work Begets Work

There's a certain amount of tenacity and grit you will need if you are going to carve out a professional creative life. The actor's journey never plays out the way you think or hope it will. This week Charlie talks to one of his best friends of thirty years, actor PJ Sosko. PJ has never sat back and waited for things to happen. He writes, directs, produces, and edits his own content. Several are now appearing in film festivals across the country. Charlie and PJ talk about his career, what he's learned along the way, and how moving to Tulsa, Oklahoma during the pandemic took his career to another level. You can follow CBP on Instagram @creatingbehavior, and Charlie's NYC acting conservatory, the Maggie Flanigan Studio @maggieflaniganstudio. Theme music by  https://www.thelawrencetrailer.com. To leave a voicemail on SpeakPipe, or contact Charlie for private coaching, check out https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com and his NYC acting studio  https://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com.

Transcript

Charlie Sandlan (00:02):

So I've said many times to you that if you want to live a professional creative life, you are going to have to have a hell of a lot of grit and a ton of resilience. But what does that really mean when you get right down to it?

(00:17):

Well, today we're going to talk to one of my very best friends, P.J. Sosko. I've known P.J. Sosko since 1994, and he has been in my life continually since then. He's one of my dearest friends. He's a ride or die, and this guy's got grit. He has been carving out a professional acting career for over 30 years, and what does that really mean? It means riding through those tough times in your 20s and 30s when you're so broke, you can't pay your bills, you're borrowing money from friends. What does it mean? It means that you are doing every single thing you can get your hands on. You're creating your own work. You are continually feeding that well of passion and desire. This is one of the most energetic, one of the most passionate people I know. He's a creative content machine, and we're going to talk to him about living a professional creative life. So put the phone back in your pocket, Creating Behavior starts now.

Music (01:23):

It's not enough.

(01:23):

It's not enough. It's not enough. Keep on chasing my dream.

Charlie Sandlan (01:43):

Well, hello my fellow Daydreamers. Friendships. Man, they come and go, don't they? You get people that come into your life like a hot flash. You have best buds for 5, 10, 15 years maybe. You do everything together and I don't know, sometimes life just changes. You get married maybe, or somebody has kids, moves to a different state and that friendship just kind of peters out, disappears, happens all the time. And then you've got that group, that handful maybe, of people that end up being in your life for decades. And I never would've thought when I was 24 and I met P.J. Sosko for the first time that this guy would still be in my life at 54. But he has been consistently one of my dearest and best friends since we first met. And in your 20s, you're living in New York City, you're bartending, you're waiting tables, you're trying to do anything you can get your hands on. And I had a chance to do this production of Coriolanus, Shakespeare play if you don't know, down at La MaMa, La MaMa ETC.

(03:05):

Now, if you don't know what La MaMa is, if you haven't been living in New York or know anything about the history of off-off-Broadway theater, LA MaMa is one of the great experimental theaters in the history of the country. It was created by a woman named Ellen Stewart way back in the 60s and became just this focal point, this hub of really interesting experimental theater. And I mean a ton of shitload of incredible actors have gone through that space. So I knew at the time, this is '95, '94, what an opportunity it was, and P.J. was playing Coriolanus and I was replacing an actor. So I was coming into a cast of people that had been working together, had gone to school together up in University of Rochester, and we hit it off. He's got this energy, it's infectious really this passion for acting. This is a guy who has, I think the perfect combination of humility and tremendous confidence and passion. And we did the show. It was a hell of a lot of fun. Mask work and a lot of physical movement. It was fantastic, and we've just been friends ever since.

(04:33):

And it also helped for about, I don't know, 20 years, we lived very close to each other, 2 blocks away for a long time, and then he ended up getting an apartment right across the street from me when I was living in Hell's Kitchen on 52nd and 9th Avenue. So we were just always popping back and forth into each other's apartments, and he actually had a backyard space. He was living on the first floor of this brownstone and it was a nice size backyard. Now if you live in New York City, that is prime real estate. And so what does he do? He puts a hot tub in his backyard. So here's this guy living in Manhattan with a hot tub in his backyard, and he loved to throw parties. He would throw parties all the time. I can't tell you the amount of stories we have back in that hot tub. It was really an incredible 10, 15 years living right across from each other.

(05:31):

And then he ends up moving to Tulsa, Oklahoma during the pandemic. He ends up getting married, he has a kid, the pandemic hits, and this guy who is addicted to New York City, who has been entrenched here for decades, had to pack up his family, go back down to his wife, Marta's family, and try to survived the pandemic and keep his career going in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I can't think of anything more catastrophic for an actor, but this guy, since he moved to Tulsa, has been working more now than he has in his entire career. Unbelievable. He's got agents in Chicago, he's got agents in Oklahoma, he's got agents in Atlanta, he's got his agents in New York City. He's working all the time. And what I love about P.J. and why I find him inspirational is that this guy never sits back and waits for something to happen. He creates more content than any actor I know. He writes, he produces, he edits, he directs, he does it all, and he doesn't stop.

(06:53):

I mean, right now he's got, I don't know, a half a dozen films in film festivals all across the country. He's in the Studio City International Festival, the Great Plains Film Festival, the New Jersey Mystery Crimes and Horror Film Festival, the Salt City Film Festival. I don't know where the fuck all these are, but they're all over the place. He's getting nominated for best actor, he's winning best actor, people are seeing his work, and this is shit that he's been cast in, stuff that he's written, that he's directed, that he's put together himself, submitted to festivals all over the country. I mean, here are just some of the titles of the films that he's got out in film festivals. Carolina Caroline, Daddy War Bucks, Stuck in Muskogee, Just the Janitor, Flint, Call of the Clown Horn.

(07:41):

Now, you've never heard of these and probably nobody ever will unless you go to these film festivals or you go to his website and look at his content, but people see his work. They go to these film festivals. Writers, directors, other actors, producers, they see what he does. They reach out, they want to collaborate and work begets work, and that is one thing that I have learned from P.J. is that you do the work, you keep putting it out there, you do it, and maybe 10 people see it, maybe 10,000 people see it. But creative artists are going to notice and they're going to see that you're somebody that not just can produce and write and direct your own shit, but you actually see it through to completion. Like you actually finish the work and you get it out there.

(08:37):

The number of times he has collaborated with people in their projects and they never finish the fucking thing. Like feature films, great independent projects where he's had incredible lead roles that could really have changed the course of his career and they never end up seeing the light of day. You want to talk about frustrating. Jesus fuck. So we're going to talk about that. These are all the little blows that kind of come your way in the midst of the really good things. The body blows. You got to sustain them, you got to weather them. And this guy has done that. He has weathered the body blows, and now he's really starting to come into this next chapter of his career and I'm just really excited for him and he's my age. So we're talking about a guy whose career is really coming into full bloom in his 50s, and I can't think personally of anybody in my life that I want to succeed more than P.J. Sosko. There's not an actor in my life that deserves it more than him.

(09:46):

And so we've been talking for a number of years about getting him on the podcast. I said, "Oh, let's wait for the right time. Let's just wait for the right time." And it is now. He just finished a great run as Hunter S. Thompson on the HBO Max show, Girls on the Bus, which did not get picked up for a second season, which is unfortunate. It's a really great show. Give it a watch. He's done film, TV. I mean Equalizer, Reservation Dog, Chicago, Med, The Blacklist, the Netflix show Mo, created by Mo Amor and Ramy Youssef, and he just completed some work with Lily Gladstone in an upcoming film called Fancy Dance. He just completed a project working with Kyra Sedgwick. I mean, he's working all the time and man, highs and lows, ups and downs of his career, being so broke, you can't pay your bills.

(10:51):

He's got an incredible voice. You'll hear it when we talk. The guy's really been able to sustain himself during those tough times when you're not really booking a lot of work with voiceovers. He's got an incredible voiceover career. He's made a nice living just off voiceovers. So this guy has been able to grind out this career of his. He's been able to create a family, get married, have a kid, a beautiful daughter, Quinn, and then is now living in Tulsa, fucking Oklahoma working nonstop.

(11:25):

So it's inspirational to me, and I hope listening to him, you'll get a sense of his passion and how excited he is. Anytime you want to talk about acting, this guy will talk about acting nonstop. "P.J. how you doing?" It's always about acting. "P.J. what's going on?" He'll talk to you about what's going on, what he's creating, what he's doing. He's addicted to it, but in a healthy way. You got to have an obsession for your art, but it's got to be proportionate, you got to have a good full life and this guy has it. So at the top of the conversation, I just asked him what he thought his career 30 years ago was going to be compared to what it is now and his feelings about that, and that's where we kick things off. So let's just get right to it. This is my dear friend, a really great actor and a hell of a human being, P.J. Sosko.

P.J. Sosko (12:25):

Oh man, you have this idea of levels you'll reach. Put it this way. There were always these ... I would see other people's journeys and I would think, "Oh, okay, there's all these levels of to come that I haven't achieved yet." Getting really close to the off-Broadway show. Then there's in the mix for a Broadway show, all these things and you think you're going to slowly march up them. I was someone who didn't come from money, didn't come from an established school, didn't have any of the things that can give you a little bit of a leap ahead. Didn't know anybody in the industry. But I could never imagine that I would be satisfied artistically in Tulsa, Oklahoma working nonstop when looking back at the guy who loved leaving my door and being in the middle of it. The minute ... There's no catch-up You get a cup of coffee in your apartment and then New York is at you.

(13:34):

I love that. It spurned me forward. I bladed out of the apartment. That's how I got around from audition to audition. This city and I, we thrived on each other, and I've made the most of every journey that I've had. There's decisions that I've made that I'm sure held my career back, but they've made me become the artist that I am. So I'm not a cat that is like, "Oh, I wish I could do that over." Well, you can't. You get one crack. I got to do Cuckoo's Nest in [inaudible 00:14:08]'s family with the son of the chief who did it in the fucking movie.

Charlie Sandlan (14:14):

Yeah, talk about that. You were doing One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest in, was it Oregon or-

P.J. Sosko (14:22):

In Portland.

Charlie Sandlan (14:22):

And you have this scene where you're supposed to jump off a table and you tore your ACL jumping off the table.

P.J. Sosko (14:29):

Jumping ... Nobody told me how high. I mean, you feel super human. Dude, you play cats like that, you feel like you're ... No one's telling me how high I'm going, dude. I landed, I fell. I heard the audience go eurgh. I looked down, I saw my leg was crooked. I lifted it up and it went ... Now I'm supposed to land and do a fucking rooster dance across the stage, and that's the cue to fucking ... That's what they called it, a rooster dance. That wasn't my intention. So I didn't do the rooster dance, lights go out, darkness, 20 minute intermission, nobody's leaving. We got like 450 out there. They don't know some shit went down. So I'm like, "All right, well someone get me an ace bandage and find me a stick." And we put gaffer tape on the stick and I sit there and I'm like, "Everybody come, come, come, come. Everybody's got to come to me. I can't do anything."

(15:31):

We had this whole thing with Nurse Ratched where I grabbed her and threw her on the table and split her legs open and you knew it was going to fucking happen and the lights would go out. That shit can't go down right now. So it's like, "I'm going to rise up. I'm going to grab you. You're going to hop on there, you're going to cut off the lights and that's it. Then I'm then dead and I don't have to move." And then they carted me off on the fucking gurney while a standing ovation, dude. It still gives me goosebumps.

Charlie Sandlan (16:03):

One of the things that I have a lot of respect for in terms of just how you've crafted a career for yourself is you've done so much more than just acting. I mean, you have written, and I mean not past tense. You write, you produce, you direct, you edit. You are constantly creating ... You create more content than any actor that I know, whether it's a 3 or 4 episode web series or it's a short 10-minute film or a full length feature. You're just constantly creating things and working. And so it's just like, what have you learned about putting on all those different hats?

P.J. Sosko (16:49):

I love it. It's when I'm thriving. When I've always felt when I got a video game that I've been the voice of, a TV show that I'm an episode of, a play going on and an ad campaign that I'm the voice of or a TV show on. That's when things are humming. I was never patient in between auditions. I realized early on that getting an agent is not okay, great. It's another thing to add to the thing. But I was always what became creating new work, became a staple in my creative life in New York City. I found these places. I did good work. You got to do good work every fucking time, whether it's a reading, whether you don't know who's going to come and it's someone's fucking living room or a library. I was coming with my guns blazing because I love storytelling. I love getting in front of the people. That interaction is just what the juice is all about.

(17:45):

How it turned out for me was voiceovers landed in my lap early on. I realized putting photos and little videos together to music, I started really getting a hang of really getting a kick out of making my own music videos. I've always seen the world that way, so that was something I got editing under my belt enough over the years trying to tell stories with things you've seen them, that when I shot my own film and couldn't find an editor here, I'm like, "Well, fuck it." DaVinci, that's the one I can download. Good. I can't pay for the other one. So I learned it in five months, I edited it and I knew what I wanted. That's what gave me the balls to kind of do it. When I'm not working, I'm developing things. I'm going to Naked Angels Tuesday nights at nine, but also the voiceovers allowed me to have the freedom that I'm not worrying about the bartending shifts to get my income.

(18:40):

So I had a little more freedom to go along. A lot of voiceover actors stop being an actor because there's so much running around at that point. I've been doing it for 25 years now. It was a very different thing back then than it is now, but that became part of my life. But also, I didn't get into this to be a voiceover artist. I got into this to be a fucking actor. So it was this side pocket thing that allowed me to explore all these ... To go away to a regional show where I might not get paid that much, but I get to do Angels in fucking America as playing Joe Pitt, or to go out there or to do the Marine Show re-entry where I got to do that over 3 years in 3 different places, and then go to a conference at Quantico and do it in front of 2,000 Marines and get the honor coin from the Sergeant Major there.

(19:28):

I mean, there are experiences that I chose to have that probably kept me out of doing TV things, but I developed it myself. So I got to do that and also get jobs in town, out of town. So it's a combination of everything, but when I wasn't getting a job in between auditions, I was finding ways to work because that's the only way to keep it oiled. I come from a ... You can take classes till the cows come home, but you got to put it online.

Charlie Sandlan (19:57):

Let's talk about that Girls on the Bus, which unfortunately did not get picked up for season two. HBO show Girls on the Bus, you got to play Hunter, S. Thompson. Yeah. What was that like? I mean, that was a nice break and a nice role and an HBO?

P.J. Sosko (20:13):

The more you know, the less I know. I leave New York, I have to leave New York and that's when suddenly I get cast in something that I have to be there for seven months. But then because I'd left New York coming back, I had a very dear friend open up his place. He had a beautiful loft apartment over the river in Jersey City, so I was considered a New York local hire. So when I got cast, then I am assumed that I am in New York, but I am not in New York. I'm in Tulsa now. One audition, send it one take on take one, one take on take two, send them in, and within a week, suddenly I'm what? I'm playing Hunter S. Thompson in a fucking HBO Max. Who's in it? I wasn't going to be like, "No. Fantastic. You guys could fly me in and put me up." That's thousands of dollars, and I'm not going to suddenly be the guy that screws this up by saying, "Now here's all the things that I want, because I also know how the game is played."

(21:22):

Now the crazy thing is it was my Atlanta agent that submitted me for it. At the point when I left, it was middle of the plague, all the agencies, "We don't know what to do with you in Tulsa." I'm like, "I know. I guess we're done." Long-standing relationships, 15 years, 10 years. So I was really starting fresh with what the local market, you'd get agents in all these different markets and they all work together and you could do different things. So I had an Atlanta one, I had someone in Oklahoma, and then I had someone in New Mexico, and that switched. Now I have someone in Chicago that I just brought into the team, but also I'm hesitant because probably in New York or LA they're going to want me to be just theirs. And right now it's kind of, dude, you've known me for 30 years. I've never been this busy.

(22:12):

I'm getting opportunities to do things that ... They're not things to necessarily write home to mom about. I'm getting to do big things for short films. I'm getting to go back to New York and do big things, and then I come here and do, I was in Reservation Dogs. In the last three months, I've worked with Jackie Earle Haley, Theo Rossi, Kyra Sedgwick. I'm working with these wonderful people. I feel like these are smaller roles where you come in for two or three days, but I'm doing my work, everybody's happy with me. They'll work with me again, and it becomes this string of things. I don't want to say it's smoke and mirrors, but you know how the business works.

(22:49):

Sometimes suddenly everything's coming out ... Right now I have things that I shot over the course of two and a half years that are all in festivals now. Girls on the Bus was just on Max. It's still streaming on Max right now. It's a great show where I got to work with Carla Gugino. I mean the list of people that I got to play with and Melissa to be on her shoulder, just a dynamite, giving actress interested in ideas that you would bring to the table. Really great to have that as the introduction to this big level of stuff.

Charlie Sandlan (23:19):

You have had a number of experiences where you have shot something that was really important, big part, lead role in an independent feature film, and then they end up never seeing the light of day because the director or the producers, whoever, they just don't see it through.

P.J. Sosko (23:38):

Drop the ball. There was something that I shot, you know it was called Whaling City, and I was a third generation fishing captain. We shot it live in New Bedford for four months, then went back and did reshoots for another month or so. It was an amazing time, and then it just goes away. It just disappears. But now that I'm in Oklahoma, people are actually finishing their projects or I'm getting cast in things that are Tulsa king, Reservation Dogs. These are legitimate shows. I got to be on Reservation Dogs. I'm a huge fan of that show. The storytelling is beautiful on that show. I got to jam with those cats and I got to bring an idea that there was no lines in a scene, and I had the idea of, I think this could happen here, and there's room for it because I love the show.

(24:29):

So I was like the homeless donut guy, but at one point I saw an opening in the script to have, the guy, Bear says "You know Shakespeare." And because I do know Shakespeare, I came up with all these stanzas from all the little things, had memorized them all, had them all in my head. So when he says Shakespeare, he could be ... Now, the reason I did that, because there was something about a through line that didn't sort of mesh for me, and I sort of like I could push him off, but also, hey, I'm weird too as a result of this scene.

(24:58):

So we do the first one, quiet, nothing, all goes well. Second one, I'm sitting in the can, my entrance is out of the bathroom, and I'm like, well, if I'm going to do it, I got to do it now, and I let it pop. And because I'd worked on Hunter who has a very ... There's a directness of thought. Also going on, tangents put a directness to where he's going, unlike me, who gets lost in a tangent, he knows where he is going to end. I knew I didn't have any room for pausing, so I had to make it organic, and if it doesn't, it's not there. Let it flow. Don't try to make it ... Don't do a shit ass job of it. But it came out, exited, everybody's laughing outside. Hard Joe comes up to me and he's like, "We were just going to ask you if you knew Shakespeare." And it was just like, "I'll do some more." I mean, but that's the work.

(25:49):

When I'm on a treadmill looking at lines, reading over the story again and again and again and again, I let my mind wander into the scene and ideas happen and lines change. "Oh, I didn't get that line right but this was an interesting phrasing of it." Not that we want to make something come closer to us because that's something you've got to be very wary of, but sometimes something rattles off. "Ooh, that's a good idea." Because I've now developed things for 35 years. I'm coming at it from a playwright, from a tone from, "Oh, I see what you're going to do at this moment. I think I can help you with that." Because part of my job as an artist is to illuminate your thing for you, that you are not expecting, and the only way you can do that is if you have choices and you have a point of view for your fucking character and have something to say about it. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of fucking lines.

Charlie Sandlan (26:39):

Well, it's interesting because you've produced films, you've produced your own theater here in New York City. I mean, you've taken projects, so how do you ... There are probably a lot of actors listening that would love to be able to bring a show to life in the city on a budget. What's the experience of guerrilla kind of theater production in New York City?

P.J. Sosko (27:08):

Early on, I was bartending. A very easy way was to find a dead night on a bar that you are working at, that you control the evening at, you've become friends with your manager. We would have pay five bucks at the door and then we have a crowd in and then they're getting money on a night when ... I mean, it's not reinventing. That was the beginning of it. I'd meet these wonderful actors who were also at the beginning of their journey and we were like, "Let's do it." And I was bartending, so that's how we did the first one. And then people catch wind of you, and you have people who start making money a little bit more that are willing to give 10 grand to you, 5 grand to you, a couple grand to you to secure the theater, and then you'll do some fundraising or you could do a silent auction. You talk to the people who are in the Broadway shows, you have them sign a poster and then suddenly that becomes an auction item.

(28:02):

There were all many ways to kill a cat, but then as that goes, that becomes a little bit less satisfying because no one's really making any money or you're just breaking even and then you get opportunities to do other things. So I left producing on the theater end and did more like development because I could just be used as a tool for the playwright, and really the first reading of a play is really, I feel like our rehearsal process is trying to get back to that authenticity of the first time those words come out of our mouth. I never understood the actors who are like, "I'm going to read it flat." Why are you wasting our fucking time? That just seems like a total ...

(28:42):

Now I understand the thought process behind it, but I'd rather just come in with, I can't stop myself from already coming in humming. The minute I read it, I'm making choices. The minute I read it, one pass, I will defend the motherfucker I'm playing. I could come up with something out of my ass from the minute I've read it first. It's like you do the things that you learn in class. I'm going to write a backstory. Now, I don't write a backstory, but immediately if you ask me a question, I'd have it, but it's all back here. The choices are innate, I guess, into it. I've trained myself to make smart choices.

Charlie Sandlan (29:25):

What do you mean by smart choices?

P.J. Sosko (29:27):

Bringing your point of view, your humor, your timing, your assessment of your life, all the stuff that you've put in. What makes you say this line your way? But you don't phone it in, you read that script and you bring choices and you bring ... So they want to work with you, they want to cast you in that thing when they do it. Every opportunity that I have, if I get a chance to send my audition, I'll do it right away. I want to plant myself in your brain because of my take on this.

Charlie Sandlan (29:58):

You have a combination of something that I try to tell my students that they need, and of all the actors I know, you possess this, and it is the perfect combination of humble confidence. You are an incredibly confident actor, but you also come to everything with humility, and that's why people like to work with you, they want to collaborate with you, they just like your energy. You have this fire that just lights up-

P.J. Sosko (30:27):

Thanks.

Charlie Sandlan (30:28):

A cast or a set. So talk to me about how you understand humble confidence.

P.J. Sosko (30:34):

Things that I've learned, the one you need to worry about is the one that comes into the set the loudest. That's the one that probably didn't do his homework. That's the one that's not going to know his lines. I've seen people behave on sets that I think is ... And I try to make sure that I don't do that. Good actors are easy to work with on set. There's no deal. You're coming in for two days and the actor, you're going to do your stuff one day, you're going to do his stuff next day. Actor who's in the TV show is just kind of blah, blah, blah his lines. He's there, and so you're acting off of that because you don't know that there's this other version of this thing that he's going to do, he hasn't told you.

(31:18):

Then the next day he's throwing a desk at your head. You have to be prepared for that stuff too, where he doesn't have to tell me, this is a series that say it's seven years in, so there's the people that are on that series have a certain camaraderie. This is how the thing goes. But you come in to do your thing for that week and it's trying to figure out all the energies. Also do good work. Also, if it's been a little bit of time since you've been on set, you got nerves whether you like them or not. The minute that all the stuff happens and you're staring at the person that you've seen on TV or not. I don't really get that way anymore. But sometimes you do, and sometimes that's fun to have that come into the equation at this stage. I mean, I've been doing this 35 years, nerves are like, "Ooh, fuck. This must matter in a way that's different than the other ones" because it always matters to me.

(32:13):

I think it's important to crave friendships that straight-up tell you the real deal. We've always had that friendship. Whether we want to hear it or not, we don't want to surround ourselves with naysayers. Boy, there's a side of it. I care about the craft. I'm an actor. I'm an artist, and I know that feels silly to say, but I wasn't ever in it for the fame. That might be a byproduct of having success in it, but I love the work, so if you keep a hold of the work, but I haven't had huge success yet, so I've always had to hustle. There are times when I look back on my career and it wasn't the success that I imagined, but I also am very aware on the outside, I don't complain too much because I've been working a lot and there's a lot of people that haven't been.

Charlie Sandlan (33:04):

So just talk to me again about the value of the importance of relationships in sustaining an acting career.

P.J. Sosko (33:16):

Yeah, well, these directing relationships, when you're always doing your best work and challenging yourself and pushing yourself in the audition process and every process that you go through, you build these relationships. I did this play where I was mentioning, I played Hemingway. That director now I've worked with three different times, and he's one of this cat did Waiting for Godot in the ... Was it the 13th Board where the floods happened in Louisiana? And did it on the roof, dude. Like live and had the audience. This cat knows how to do special theater, so here's a perfect example. So that cat, he had this piece that was called A Loft Modulation that was about a life photographer, W. Eugene Smith, who invented the notion of the photo essay in Life Magazine. Went off the rails, ends up in Chelsea in a tenement walkup. At this point, everyone's doing reel to reel, wires the whole building with microphones and jazz greats know who this cat is, come over to this place and talk about creating a art, like Dizzy, I mean the giants that walked through this crazy motherfucker's place.

(34:39):

He's recording it all, taking pictures outside of his window, thousands of photographs. This stuff gets lost. Then it gets found. He writes a play about it. I get to play that guy talking to these jazz greats and then we develop it for almost a decade, do reading after reading, changing parts, changing pieces. It finally gets a chance and we have a huge beautiful off-Broadway production. But it was also because I got to do all those developments along the way, so I made that a priority because I want to play this guy. It was a different voice, it was a different physicality. It was really having to do a transformative performance, and I worked him over a decade and he kept staying in my ... There's this song, "I walk a mile in your shoes but now I'm a mile away and I still have your shoes." And that's how I feel about characters.

(35:35):

They stay with you and then you revisit and you get to revisit them. I developed this play about Marines that was called The Entry because I took a workshop and that workshop led to a production and that production led to a bigger production, and I turned down probably a couple of film roles or I wasn't in town to do stuff because I made that a priority because I developed that.

Charlie Sandlan (35:58):

Listen, you've got a hell of a lot of grit. I'm curious about how you weathered some of the dark moments where you could quit and say, "I can't. I'm too broke. I don't have any money. I'm not going anywhere." How do you navigate the dark times?

P.J. Sosko (36:14):

I learned early on that money's going to come and go in this. Now it's helpful that I've had it come, not just go. Understanding the nature that the career's going to go like this money-wise, work-wise and knowing that the high times are going to have a low time. You don't want it to, but I've gone it through enough that it's just part of the business. I'm not deriving too much joy from the finer things in life. I enjoy the simple things as much as I can, so I'm not wanting and feeling like, "Oh, there's this thing I want to get to." I'm kind of fine where I'm at.

Charlie Sandlan (36:47):

Did you ever contemplate quitting?

P.J. Sosko (36:49):

There's been a couple of times, dude, where I feel like I've come close to the precipice of like, well, I don't know, and then here comes work.

Charlie Sandlan (37:00):

How do you consider the importance of listening as an actor?

P.J. Sosko (37:08):

It's all, it's everything, it's absolutely everything. Absolutely. You cannot pretend to listen. I see so many people pretending to listen. Stillness. Stillness, I learned. You see me, man, I go a mile a minute. Stillness was a huge thing for me to learn. Make the choices, have your ideas, have the other lines, have the other thoughts. Then you got to strip them all away. If you've done that work, it's going to be somewhere in the ether around you because you've focused on it, you've thought about it, you storytold that way in your own head. But when it comes to it, then you hope that it'll just come at the right point or it won't, or something else will. That thought that you had will then nudge you in a way that you wouldn't have thought in this moment. Those things are so important to bring to the table because they, again, keep coming back to them. It's the point of view thing, man. If you don't bring your point of view to the table, why the fuck am I listening to you?

Charlie Sandlan (38:11):

I mean, you're talking about authenticity there, and that's really what you're getting at.

P.J. Sosko (38:16):

Well, it's an overused word. We've all now learned to be like, oh, I don't want to say, but it is. It's seeking that authenticity. That is the most important part of it, and that each character's going to have its own authenticity, but your point of view is then going to bring life to that authenticity that the character has, and that's when shit comes alive, and that's when you're highlighting things that the writer didn't even know. I love to come into a ... I have ways to think of ... I want to recommend to the DP a way to do a shot that'll save us three and [inaudible 00:38:51]. If I have that idea, I do not stop myself from doing it unless I can tell that they're doing their thing and it's not that kind of room. But if I'm number one on these short films, I'm coming in like a creative dynamo because I now approach things as a filmmaker.

(39:05):

And I've heard Ethan Hawke talk about that, and I agree. I've done so much now. I mean, I've been shooting independent films for 25 years. Many of them you haven't seen, but I've been developing all along, so that's something that, again, taking every chance I get. When I was starting, every student film man, student film, the things in backstage, do it for a week, I learned so much. Oh, I shat out some fucking eggs early on, dude. I have actually a DVD that says the good ones and the bad ones of the first five, six years of messing around with things.

(39:44):

But boy, there were some really good ones in there and that I allow the work to encourage the work. I'm not going to blow smoke up my ass, but I will acknowledge when something's good. I don't necessarily like watching myself up on screen, but I like seeing something that I've crafted land on an audience a certain way, whether it be a lean-in or a breath. Just your radar gets out when you've done it with an audience, and that's always fun, so you can really hear a pin drop or the fact that you can hear a pin drop, it's like they're there. They're fucking there. It's fun, but it is fucking work.

(40:25):

But that I get to do that, that is a privilege, and it's not something that I take lightly, and it's really, really hard to do it for a long time when faced against all the odds that this career has in front of you. And the fact that I've made a living as an actor for about 30 years is a miracle. [inaudible 00:40:49].

Charlie Sandlan (40:45):

... Miracle.

P.J. Sosko (40:49):

All of it's been awesome. I derive just as much from reading in someone's living room as I can, making a set hush as the number one on set, coming to do a really hard scene.

Charlie Sandlan (41:07):

I love talking to you, man. We've known each other for a long time.

P.J. Sosko (41:10):

[inaudible 00:41:11].

Charlie Sandlan (41:11):

And yeah, I love you like a brother, where you're a ride or die.

P.J. Sosko (41:16):

Oh man. [inaudible 00:41:17] with you, and let me say to give you props as an artist, trying to find things to listen to to give yourself motivation on all the drives I had to do between Tulsa and New York City, which is like a three-day drive. Thank you. I loved listening to the pod.

Charlie Sandlan (41:33):

Thanks.

P.J. Sosko (41:33):

You talk about fill in the tank. You are someone that constantly fills this tank, constantly reading, constantly seeking. Whenever I talk with you, I'm wanting to know what's your favorite book recommendation right now, because I know you don't take that lightly. It's really cool to see the place that you've dug for yourself and the seriousness that you bring to it as well. So props to you.

Charlie Sandlan (41:56):

Thank you.

P.J. Sosko (41:57):

Because I am very proud to be part of this. I think you've got a great podcast.

Charlie Sandlan (42:02):

I appreciate that. Thank you, my friend. So let's just get us out of here on this. All right, what's some advice from someone who's been grinding out an acting life for 35 years, for anyone that's maybe disillusioned or feeling like it's just not worth it, or they're just starting out and they don't know what the fuck to do because there's nothing on their resume. Give me a few words and then we'll fade the music up.

P.J. Sosko (42:32):

Your journey's going to be your own. I could have done all the things that one other actor did, and it might not have yielded the same results. If you love this, any opportunity you get a chance to storytell any opportunity you get a chance to, whether it be in someone's living room, whether it be a reading, whether it be a staged reading or reading in front of people, a workshop. Let yourself find those communities. It is so important. That's what has nurtured me as an artist, that I found a community of 25, 30, 100, 150 people over the years. Every gig that you do take a friend, there should be one person from whether it be crew, whether it be the director, whether it be another actor or several, take one, everyone. Make sure that you find an artist that you connect with, that you can learn from.

(43:23):

Suck it up, and that's another thing. Take a tall glass of suck it the fuck up sometimes. Don't complain. What did you do? Did you do everything? Did you do everything that you could have done? Did you work all night? Did you have the lines? Did you do the work? Bring that. If you keep doing that, I think the results happen. Challenge yourself.

Music (43:45):

It's not enough. It's not enough. Keep on chasing the dream.

Charlie Sandlan (43:48):

Well, my fellow daydreamers, thank you for sticking around and keeping that phone in your pocket. Please subscribe, follow the show, share it with your friends. Tell them about CBP. It's a source of creative inspiration. And if you got a few seconds, could you go to iTunes? Really seriously, write a written review. It would mean a hell of a lot to me. It would help the show. You can go to https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcacast.com Go to the contact page. Hit that red button. I use SpeakPipe. Leave me a message, ask me a question. I will get back to you. You can also go to https://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com if you are interested in studying with me at my New York City conservatory, and you can follow me on Instagram @creatingbehavior @maggieflaniganstudio. Lawrence Trailer, thank you for the song, my man, my friends. Grind it out. Stay resilient, play full out with yourself, and don't ever settle for your second best. My name is Charlie Sandlan. Peace.

Music (44:41):

It's not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough. It' not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough.